Liquid-Metal-Fluidically Switchable Metasurface for Broadband and Polarization-Insensitive Absorption

This paper proposes a switchable metasurface for broadband and polarization-insensitive absorption, whose absorption spectrum can be fluidically switched using liquid metal. The proposed metasurface consists of a top metallic pattern, a flexible printed circuit board substrate, a polydimethylsiloxane substrate, and a bottom metallic ground plane. The proposed unitcell is inspired by a four-circular-sector structure. To maintain the symmetrical geometry and increase the switching range, a symmetrical microfluidic channel is designed with a circular ring capillary and four isolated patches. To measure the absorptivity of the proposed metasurface, 10 × 10 unitcells are fabricated with 20 inlets and 20 outlets. When the microfluidic channels of the metasurface are empty, the fabricated metasurface achieves an absorptivity of higher than 90%, from 6.23 to 12.14 GHz. When eutectic gallium-indium alloy is injected into the microfluidic channels, the fabricated metasurface achieves higher than 90% absorptivity, from 5.44 to 6.12 GHz. Thus, for both cases, the absorptivity is constant at different incident polarization angles.